I decided I needed to update my Apache Guacamole instance to their latest version – 1.5.5. Unfortunately the git repo I provided in my last article about it – https://techblog.jeppson.org/2021/03/guacamole-docker-quick-and-easy/ – doesn’t appear to work properly, even with a fresh install. So, I set about to rebuild from scratch. I found this article which helped me to do it. I updated the version from 1.4.0 to 1.5.5 and it worked beautifully.

Make guacamole directory

mkdir guacamole
cd guacamole

Pull down images

docker pull guacamole/guacamole:1.5.5
docker pull guacamole/guacd:1.5.5
docker pull mariadb:10.9.5

Grab database initialization file

docker run --rm guacamole/guacamole:1.5.5 /opt/guacamole/bin/initdb.sh --mysql > initdb.sql

Make initial docker-compose.yml file with just the database for now:

services:
  guacdb:
    container_name: guacamoledb
    image: mariadb:10.9.5
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'MariaDBRootPass'
      MYSQL_DATABASE: 'guacamole_db'
      MYSQL_USER: 'guacamole_user'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'MariaDBUserPass'
    volumes:
      - './db-data:/var/lib/mysql'
volumes:
  db-data:

Copy sql script into container and execute it

docker cp initdb.sql guacamoledb:/initdb.sql
sudo docker exec -it guacamoledb bash
cat /initdb.sql | mysql -u root -p guacamole_db
<insert MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD as defined earlier>
exit

Add the guacd & guacamole sections to your docker-compose.yml file

This is the end result:

services:
  guacdb:
    container_name: guacamoledb
    image: mariadb:10.9.5
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'MariaDBRootPass'
      MYSQL_DATABASE: 'guacamole_db'
      MYSQL_USER: 'guacamole_user'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'MariaDBUserPass'
    volumes:
      - './db-data:/var/lib/mysql'
  guacd:
    container_name: guacd
    image: guacamole/guacd:1.4.0
    restart: unless-stopped
  guacamole:
    container_name: guacamole
    image: guacamole/guacamole:1.4.0
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    environment:
      GUACD_HOSTNAME: "guacd"
      MYSQL_HOSTNAME: "guacdb"
      MYSQL_DATABASE: "guacamole_db"
      MYSQL_USER: "guacamole_user"
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: "MariaDBUserPass"
      TOTP_ENABLED: "true"
    depends_on:
      - guacdb
      - guacd
volumes:
  db-data:

Start docker compose stack

Finally run docker compose up -d to get everything up and running again.

Remove /guacamole in the URL

The article says guacamole must have /guacamole at the end of the URL, but that is not correct. There is an environment variable you can pass to the container to tell the context to run in root instead of the guacamole subdirectory. If this is your desire, simply add

WEBAPP_CONTEXT: "ROOT"

to the guacamole section in your docker compose file and re-run sudo docker compose up -d

Here is my final docker compose file for Guacamole 1.5.5:

services:
  guacdb:
    container_name: guacamoledb
    image: mariadb:10.9.5
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'MariaDBRootPass'
      MYSQL_DATABASE: 'guacamole_db'
      MYSQL_USER: 'guacamole_user'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'MariaDBUserPass'
    volumes:
      - './db-data:/var/lib/mysql'

  guacd:
    container_name: guacd
    image: guacamole/guacd:1.5.5
    restart: unless-stopped

  guacamole:
    container_name: guacamole
    image: guacamole/guacamole:1.5.5
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    environment:
      GUACD_HOSTNAME: "guacd"
      MYSQL_HOSTNAME: "guacdb"
      MYSQL_DATABASE: "guacamole_db"
      MYSQL_USER: "guacamole_user"
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: "MariaDBUserPass"
      TOTP_ENABLED: "true"
      WEBAPP_CONTEXT: "ROOT"
    depends_on:
      - guacdb
      - guacd

volumes:
  db-data: